


She is Tony Stark

by CatChan



Series: Take Their Breath Away [1]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Iron Man - All Media Types, Marvel, Marvel (Comics), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Always a Different Sex, Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Cats, Circuit Board, Gen, General bad parental behavior towards a four years old kid, Howard Stark's A+ Parenting, Jarvis Is A Good Friend, Jarvis is the best, Name Issues, Stark Familly's A+ Parenting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-04
Updated: 2014-09-04
Packaged: 2018-02-16 03:23:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,694
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2253996
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CatChan/pseuds/CatChan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Antoinette Stark was four the first time she felt anger toward her given name.</p><p> <br/><i>Or, the story where Howard Stark is... Howard, Jarvis is awesome, and Tony learns French, then takes her life into her own hands.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	She is Tony Stark

Antoinette Stark was four the first time she felt anger toward her given name.

Real anger, that is, not mere annoyance at how people tended to butcher it's pronunciation.

She had just completed her first circuit board, and proudly showcased it to her Dad, hopping he'd turn the look he usually gave to his project on her own creation. She wanted him to take it, ask her what it was for, tell her if she'd made mistakes... She wanted him to be proud of her.

Instead, he patted her head, not even looking at her. “Good, good, Nenette, Go to your mother, I don't have time.”

On the few TV shows and movies Antoinette had watched (alone, because her parents had no time for such things), dads didn't talk to their children like that. Dogs were treated like that. But there was something more, something grating in the very name her dad had used. Nenette... She didn't like it.

Frowning, she'd stood there until it became clear her Dad would not pay her anymore attention, then she stomped over to her desk and slammed her work on it. It wouldn't serve her in any way, she knew that, but she was irked, and the noise and violence soothed her a bit.

She decided she had to know why she hated that nickname, even if it was clear her Father's dismissive attitude was what got to her worse, she had discovered there was little to nothing she could do to change her Dad, so she latched on the second worst part. Maybe she could understand, dismantle, solve, this one problem, it would make her feel better for the rebuttal she just got.

Admittedly, her name was rather long and hard to find a nickname for. Anty sounded either like a bug or like she was adverse to everything, Anette sounded half-assed, Nette was worse.

Nenette sounded like... The way Jarvis sometime called the stray cats when giving them the dinner's leftovers at the back door. She wasn't really supposed to know that, since she was supposed to be sleeping then, not creeping in the backyard. And she'd never told anyone about what she saw, because her dad was not all that fond of animals and she liked Jarvis enough to cover for him. Especially if it meant not admitting she'd been somewhere she shouldn't have been.

 

* * *

 

There was a proverb about what she did then. Something about times and measures... Not important. She went to see Jarvis. He looked at her a bit baffled by her presence in the kitchen, but when she started to speak “I have a question about the cats,” he cut her and led her out of the bustling room full of nosy maids, and to the summer tea room.

She noted that it was mid-autumn and the room was already sparkling clean, so they wouldn't have anyone entering on them. She internally approved of Jarvis' discretion and threw herself in one of the lounge chair, pulling the fabric cover over her shoulder because it was kind of chilly.

Jarvis fidgeted a bit, then sat on the low table opposite her. “You know about the cats?”

Antoinette did a sort of snort her dad sometimes used when a particularly stupid question was asked about his tech. “Knew for a full year.”

Jarvis' eyes went wide, then his brow went tight, then he opened his mouth, closed it, blinked... It was kind of entertaining to see. “You didn't tell anyone?”

Antoinette let her eyes roll skyward. “No I didn't. Why would I? I have no good excuse for knowing and I kind of like you.” She flushed a bit at the admittance; Jarvis' face went all slack, then his eyes grew soft and he smiled.

“I _kind of like you_ too, Milady.” Antoinette frowned at the parroting, then the words caught up to her. She knew her face must be doing an expression race too, but she was really surprised, and flattered. Then she narrowed her eyes suspiciously, there had to be a catch! Jarvis looked uncomfortable and he changed the subject. “So? What do you want to know about them? I suspect you have a good reason to bring the subject up, in the kitchen, of all places...”

Antoinette flushed again, looked up at him shyly, but he just seemed curious, and not angry, so she said the real problem. “Dad called me Nenette.” Jarvis was looking like he was waiting for the question part, and she got embarrassed. She blurted the whole reasoning without even meaning to. “Idon'tlikethatbutIdon'tknowwhysoIthoughtabouthowyoucallthecatsandmaybeyouknowwhyIdon'tlikethat-why-do-the-names-you-call-them-sound-the-same?”

Jarvis looked a bit lost, but she didn't blame him, she hadn't been particularly articulate, there. “I... I nicknamed the cats... Huh. You know your name is French, right?” Antoinette nodded, she had at least a vague knowledge it was an ancient Royalty name, her Mother had said something like that to one of her friends while introducing the girl. Jarvis went on. “Well, er, I don't speak French, so I don't know for sure, but the -ette end is something that points to femininity, and... Cuteness?”

Antoinette made a face. “I am _not_ cute!”

Jarvis blinked. But then his face went back to its usual blankness. “Whatever you say, Milady.” That really resembled the subdued butler style he used when her Dad was being unreasonable. She scrunched her nose, he laughed and smiled to her. “You are very cute too, but that's not the question there, is it? Well, anyway, one of the French resistant I met in London during the war used to name female cats 'Minette' he also used it to talk about girls, so I am a bit thrown on the real meaning, but cats tended to be called that by him, or Nenette. I think one of the French ways to make cute nicknames is to take the end of the name but add a repetition.”

Antoinette mulled the new information over. It was more to start on than she thought she would get.

Jarvis probably saw something on her face, because he asked if he'd answered her question. “It is a start,” she said, and she hopped out of the chair to get out of the room.

Jarvis was arranging the cover back on it's place, and she was almost to the door when he cleared his voice, she turned around to see his domestic mask was back in place. “Milady, I would love to show you a flower that blooms in late autumn evenings, in the back garden?”

The sentence made circles in her brain, until she understood Jarvis had just underhandedly invited her to feed the cats with him. She raced back in, and lunged in a hug. Jarvis was the best butler ever. He patted her shoulder awkwardly as she mumbled a thanks in his trousers.

When her brain caught back to her, she let go, righted herself and retreated once again, conscious she was now bright red, and that she wasn't supposed to be that familiar with the staff.

But then again, Jarvis was more than just another staff member... She turned around after opening the door. “This is our secret!” Then she closed the door. According to the kids at school, she shared a secret with Jarvis, so now he was her friend. It was okay to hug friends.

 

* * *

 

The next step was to learn a bit more about French, and about her name, so she went to her Mother. Mom and her had never quite gotten along together the way other little girl and mothers did at her school. At the school, moms would come pick their daughter, and tell them that they would go tailor a new dress, or watch a film, or cook... And the girl would be delighted. 

To Antoinette, it seemed a bit strange, and wonderful. Of course, if her Mom had done that, she would definitely not have been delighted, but fact was that Mother didn't. If she was there to pick Antoinette up, she'd tell her about the next thing she had to do, or ask her if she had a dress for the next Gala, but it didn't have the same 'let's do something fun together' vibe, it was just making sure Antoinette wouldn't be an embarrassment by wearing the same thing twice.

And anyway, Antoinette was usually picked by the chauffeur, since her parents didn't have time.

But, Mom was the one insisting that Antoinette should know how to dance, and master table etiquette, and play piano at least passably, so Antoinette was sure she could ask her for a ton of French learning books and get them. Possibly along with a French young lady to tutor her.

The tutor was not what she angled for, but it couldn't be all that bad. At worse, she'd have her tell her everything about this -ette deal, then scare her off by her now famous bad character and pranks.

 

* * *

 

Mother was, predictably, delighted to hear her daughter wanted to be more knowledgeable about her noble name and the refined language it came from. She called Jarvis up, and told him to bring Antoinette to a book shop and buy anything that would help in her search, then added that she would have loved to help Antoinette along, but she had something important to take care of, but that she was welcome to share any of her findings with her.

Jarvis smiled, bowed, and led Antoinette out. Once they were safely in the car, he chuckled and told 'Milady' that she was going very fast.

Antoinette gave a strained smile. “Is that bad?”

Jarvis' brow jumped up in surprise. “Of course not!” He looked at her sideways, and Antoinette felt that she was tensing up. “You know what? Since you already know one of my secrets, I think I can tell you that.” She almost bounced in her seat. Another secret, Jarvis would be even more her friend, now! “I think it is very good, you can tell what is important to you, hold it close and race down that path. It is something most person loose, but it is precious, there is nothing that will make you life sadder than regrets about something you could have done, yet dropped for a bad reason.”

Antoinette weighed the wisdom of that advice. It was sound reasoning, and she carefully put it in a corner of her mind as an advice from her friend. But... “That's not a real secret!”

Jarvis huffed a laugh, which was not the goal at all, but she wasn't even upset (she still pouted, tough). “I am not supposed to have opinion about you, or any of your family or guests. That's how my job works, little Lady. But I think you don't really mind my advices?”

Antoinette nodded solemnly. “Of course, you are my friend, now, you have the right to tell me what you think!” Jarvis seemed surprised, and Antoinette figured he might not know how friends worked. “We have a secret and a secret meeting, of course we are friends!” Jarvis' smile was very soft when she said that, and she wondered if her Dad would ever smile like that for her. Jarvis was, like, just ten years younger than Dad, but Dad had never done what Jarvis just did just for her.

But Dad was her Father, not her friend.

 

* * *

 

The run in the bookshop with Jarvis was completely fun, and she promised herself to make up other reason to do that again. The fact that Jarvis slipped in some police and fantasy novels in both French and English “for real experience” did nothing but sweeten the deal.

She was kind of stunned there was so much to be found on her chosen subject, even in the biggest bookstore of New York, but she understood that there actually wasn't so much here. Jarvis had thrown the 'Stark' name out, and said what he wanted, and the clerks had scrambled off to all the parts of the town to get the order.

In the end, they spent one hour choosing notebooks, high-lither and different pens from the art section “For research purposes, Milady, you will certainly need to take notes” (Antoinette kind of wondered how Jarvis knew her so well and how much of his statements were humor, as it was certain she'd use those supplies mostly for engineering purposes).

They also checked out the comics, that Jarvis got the clerks to slip in the bill, but asked for the actual name of the issue (Captain America, what else?) to not shown on the run down but replaced by it's serial number.

The clerk had looked a bit surprised, but then he had looked at them, chuckled, and went typing on his keyboard.

Antoinette made sure to remember how much her name could do for her. She might try that again later. She did not see the exact sum of both the checks Jarvis signed “one for the articles, the other for the tip. You should never forget to tip, Milady, it is what makes you so well served, people are much more helpful when you are generous to them”; But the clerk went all wide eyed and thanked Jarvis.

Then he seemed to catch that it wasn't Jarvis' money they were spending, and he turned to Antoinette. “Thank you very much for your generosity, young Lady, it is a pleasure to help you, come back anytime you need something.”

They got some store people to help carry their purchases back to the car.

Before they got home to be surrounded by nosy staff people (who would help carry her books to her room, but still nosy) she asked Jarvis how much she was supposed to tip.

 

* * *

 

As it turned out, -ette was an add-on that could transform a masculine word into a feminine one, but mainly conveyed the fact that it was smaller. So “une piécette” was a little “pièce” (means coin, by the way, well a coin, and a lesser value coin...). In fact, it was much like the -y that differentiated a cat from a kitty.

As such, “Antoinette” more or less meant 'lesser, smaller and feminine Antoine'. She didn't like it. How come she was worth less than an Antoine just because she was a girl? Why did she have to be 'little girl Antoine' all her life?

 

* * *

 

The study of who wore her name too ended up showing even worse result. The most famous person with it was Marie-Antoinette, a princess from Austria who married the French King Louis XVI (sixteen) and got framed, insulted, disregarded by the French people before she finally got beheaded just after her husband by revolutionists.

Her last letter to her sister in law, that contained her last words for her children, never made it to its destination, and she was used again as an example of all the bad in royalty a couple centuries latter, by being lent words she never said (something about how if the people didn't have anymore bread to eat, they should just eat brioche instead).

 

* * *

 

When she told all her findings to Jarvis, on their now daily feed the cats meet-up in the backyard, he winced, and asked her what she wanted to do about that.

Antoinette was a bit surprised. “What I want to do?”

“Well, yes. You know your problem, now. You just have to find a way to solve it.” She had kissed him on the cheek and ran off to her room to look everything again. Solving problems, that she could do.

 

* * *

 

She found a solution. One that linked back to Dad's words. She had a long name. One people would look to shorten by the use of nicknames. She only had to decide on an appropriate nickname and stick to it, so people wouldn't call her something she hated.

It brought back to the original problem, not easy to cut her name. But now, she knew her name was a derivative from Antoine, which was the French version of Antony. So calling herself Tony was not all that far fetched. Additionally, it was a nickname that already existed, so people would not look at her too strangely for it. And they wouldn't fumble the pronunciation

 

* * *

 

When she told that to Jarvis on the next day, he smiled, and asked how she would make it stick with her parents.

Jarvis always had the good questions, she loved him.

 

* * *

 

Her solution tuned out to be rather bold, but surprisingly simple.

She figured the boldness would help. If she didn't want to be looked down upon because she was a girl, she had to be as boyish as she could.

She didn't have scissors that were suited for what she wanted, so she plugged her soldering iron, gathered her hair, and brought the tool through them. It smelled like burnt pig, and the strands stuck together because of the heat, the final result was shaggy and unaesthetic, but she was feeling lighter. Hair couldn't be magically regrown, and so, she knew her decision was final.

She carefully cleaned the soldering iron, then gathered up the silky length from her workbench. Soft wavy dark brown hair that shone even in the lowest light because she had a standing bi-weekly appointment with the hairdresser to redo the cut and apply ointments that kept them healthy.

She considered keeping them to slam on the dinner table along with the study book that explained her demand to be called Tony, but thought better of it.

She didn't trash all of them, though.

She kept the thickest, longest, silkiest strand and tied it up on both ends with her now useless favorite bows.

 

* * *

 

When she entered the dinning room with her study notebook clutched to her chest, Jarvis jumped a bit from his corner and her Mother gasped, which made her Father turn to look at her.

For a moment, she felt tiny, and unworthy and foolish, but her Dad had his eyebrows raised in the appraising way he used to do when someone presented him with a potentially interesting project.

This was the look she wanted to get when she'd presented him her circuit board two weeks prior, and she felt her spine straighten up, her tongue coming free.

“I have done some research on my name.” Tony said. At the table, her Dad was tilting him head sideways, while her Mother was gaping uselessly, open, closed, open, closed, it was rather unsightly, and Jarvis was smiling at her in his soft, warm way. “Antoinette is a feminine version of the male name Antoine, by the way of a -ette suffix. The -ette add-on generally points to being smaller, but also to being worth less than the first object. I don't believe I have to be worth less just because I am a girl, so I'd like to be called Tony...”

She was ready to start on the next verse of her speech, that included the historic research, that she'd included to show she had good reasons not to want to be called by her given name, but her Dad waved her over, so she went to him, a little wary of getting slapped.

Her Dad didn't slap her, though, he just took the notebook from her hands and sifted through it, then looked at her, half smiling. “Okay, Tony. Was that all you wanted to say?”

Tony felt pride course down her spine at the admittance of her work, and blurted the next sentence without even thinking about it. “I made a circuit board, would you look at it?”

 

Her Mother finally found her voice again before the maids started bringing lunch, and screeched about appropriate appearances and ancient noble names, but Dad stopped her, saying that his daughter at last had guts, and demanding that Maria stopped acting like a child.

Mother gaped again, then grabbed Tony's wrist and dragged her out and to the hairdresser to “salvage what still could be”. Her grasp was too tight and a bit painful, but Tony went along.

 

When Jarvis had opened the car's door and Mom was sliding in, Tony slid the strand of hair that she had kept, out of her pocket and gave it to him. She thought she saw a tear roll down his cheek as she plastered herself to the window, ignoring her Mom's monologue, and tried to look at her friend until he disappeared.

Jarvis stood there, unmoving, clutching Tony's gift until the car turned and she could no longer see him.

 

* * *

 

She had to sit at the hairdresser's for three whole hours, her stomach growling and hurting because she hadn't eaten before they went away, she didn't regret her decision.

 

* * *

 

When she came back home, her Dad handed her her circuit board, saying that she flubbed some parts but it was in working order, and that a reporter would come the next day.

 

* * *

 

She reveled in the way her Father told the reporter how proud he was of her, how she was talented, and she was daring, and she should be called Tony Stark.

 

* * *

 

The next day, he was acting as if she wasn't here again.

 

* * *

 

Her Mother wouldn't call her Tony, she stuck to girl. Or girlie, it made her hackles rise.

 

* * *

 

Jarvis still called her 'Milady', it made her feel warm and fuzzy. Jarvis, she decided, had the right to call her Antoinette. He didn't, even after she'd told him so. That was why she'd trust him with that right. Because he still called her Milady.

 

* * *

 

When she grew up, she ruthlessly squashed any reporter who found it funny to bring up her given name. She accepted to be called Tony, Antony, and even Anton or Antoine. Anyone who pushed that line usually found themselves fired in the following month, either because of the pressure she applied on their bosses, or because the company they worked for got bought by Stark Industries and they got shooed out in the process.

Everyone got the message.

 

* * *

 

She made a society named Tony Stark, so she didn't have to sign 'Antoinette' on her (very numerous) patents.

 

* * *

 

She is Tony Stark.

 

* * *

 


End file.
